Thirty-one states received more money from the federal government than they sent in FY 2024.

Federal grants support a large portion of state and local budgets, funding Medicaid, infrastructure, education, and housing. In FY 2024, these transfers made up about 16% of total federal spending.

While America’s federal government primarily raises revenue through personal and corporate income taxes, it's a different story for each of the 50 states. This map shows how every state raises tax revenue for government activities. New York and California, for instance, raise most of that money through personal income taxes, whereas Texas and Florida have sales tax as their largest sources of tax revenue. Click here to see the map.

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Local governments collect about $886B each year to support education, infrastructure, and public health. Roughly three-quarters of this funding comes from property taxes, with the rest sourced from sales, excise, and income taxes.

The US government historically makes nearly half of its total revenue last year from individual income taxes. But the US makes also makes money from a variety of other sources, including Medicare taxes and corporate income taxes. However, the federal government has run a deficit since 2001—reaching a peak of $3.13T in 2020.

That adds up to close to $1T in what's known as the "tax gap." Read a breakdown on the main drivers of tax evasion (distinct from legal tax avoidance) in the US.

Local governments allocate 39% of their spending to K-12 education, while states allocate less than 1% directly—although much of local education funding actually comes from state and federal grants to local communities. States instead allocate their budgets to public welfare and health programs (45%) and higher education (15%).

In the US, the top 1% of earners contribute 45% of all personal income taxes collected nationwide. But not all states are created equal when it comes to income tax. Some states are more dependent on the 1% than others for tax revenue. SmartAsset recently examined IRS tax return data to determine exactly how much the top 1% of earners in each state paid in taxes. Find your state here.

Public K-12 schools spent around $857B in 2024, averaging $17,277 per student. State and local sources shouldered nearly 90% of costs, and federal funds provided about $2,400 per pupil.

About 50 percent of federal revenue comes from individual income taxes, 7 percent from corporate income taxes, and another 36 percent from payroll taxes that fund social insurance programs. See breakdown in charts here.

In 2019, the federal government covered about one-sixth of the $79B spent on public transit. States and localities make up the rest. About 85% of all transit trips are taken by bus or heavy rail, and nearly 4 in 10 US transit trips occur in the New York City metro area.

According to 2025 data, sports betting generated $2.7B in state tax revenue. That number has increased every year since the government began collecting data in 2021.

It costs the IRS a significant amount of money to do part of its job—collecting money. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service spent $16.1B to collect $4.7T in taxes in 2023.

While the US doesn't operate a federal sovereign wealth fund, several states run SWFs—the most well-known being the Alaska Permanent Fund. Unlike most SWFs, the Alaska Permanent Fund sends cash payments averaging roughly $1.2K each directly to Alaskan residents each year.

Did you know that $100 is worth 26% less in California than in Arkansas? The value of a dollar isn't consistent in every US state due to a multitude of factors, such as taxes and other varying cost-of-living differences.

Federal, state, and local governments share responsibility for funding public services. Education, roads, and social programs are funded through a complicated mix of taxes and intergovernmental transfers.

Some states in the US have higher taxes than others. Hawaii, for instance, has the highest total tax burden in the country at 13.9%, whereas Alaska has the lowest overall tax burden at 4.9%. New York has the highest individual income tax burden; and eight states have no individual income tax. See a map of the most-taxed US states here.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services distributes funds annually to State Library Administrative Agencies, which support statewide initiatives and channel funds to public and academic libraries.

When ridership collapsed by 75% in the spring of 2020, Congress sent transit agencies nearly $70B to help them survive. But that money has largely run out, and ridership remains 14-28% below prepandemic levels, leaving many transit systems with large budget deficits.

The NSF accounted for 0.1% of all federal spending in FY2024, with $9.39B—just over twice its FY1991 spending—out of $6.78T overall. Almost 99% of these funds ($9.29B) went to general science and basic research, with the rest allocated to national defense.

The average national price jumped from $3.02 to $4.12 per gallon between March and April in 2026, but state prices range widely, from $3.66 in Texas to $5.79 in California, driven by differences in taxes, proximity to supply, and local competition.

As of 2024, the US has 621 cities where a typical home costs $1M or more. California has more million-dollar cities than any other state by a long shot, with 218. New York comes in second with 76. Want to see where other states rank? Check out this map to learn more.

Sold to Congress as a national defense measure, the Interstate Highway Act committed the federal government to covering 90 cents of every dollar spent on a 41,000-mile freeway network, a subsidy that reshaped American cities and supercharged car dependency.

That year, 67.2% of foreign aid was for economic purposes, and the remaining 32.8% was for military purposes. Israel received more US foreign aid than any other country in 2024.

Hollywood films generate roughly $49B for the US economy each year. In California, the film industry provides more than 200,000 jobs. Industry employees were paid more than $42B in wages in 2022.

Social security is the US government’s largest expense. You can see other government expenses in a visual breakdown of what one US tax dollar actually pays for. Total spending amounts were converted to cents on the dollar and percentages.

About 43 million Americans hold a cumulative $1.6T in federal student debt. That's more than the country's combined credit card balance, according to data from in the first quarter of the year 2024.

WalletHub researchers evaluated not just income taxes but real estate, sales, and other levies in order to rank every state by its total effective local and state tax rate (not including federal). Alaska scored the lowest total tax rate and Illinois...

Local governments finance most of the costs for police in the US. Total state and local criminal justice spending—covering police, courts, and corrections—reaches hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

As of 2022, there were a reported total of 90,837 local government units across the US. Illinois had the highest number with 6,930, followed by Texas with 5,533. Explore all the data from the 2022 Census of Governments, which takes place every five years.

This map compares US state economies by their gross domestic product to that of a similarly sized country. For instance, California has the largest state economy in the US, with a GDP nearly equal to that of India, the fifth-largest economy in the world. Click here to see how the rest of the states compare.

Created by the Urban Mass Transportation Act in 1964, the FTA funds and oversees the roughly 2,200 transit systems that receive federal support across the US, covering everything from subway capital investment to rural bus service.